"All this region is very level and full of forests, vines and butternut trees. No Christian has ever visited this land and we had all the misery of the world trying to paddle the river upstream." Samuel de Champlain

Monday, November 30, 2015

All summer long, the Canada Geese have been flying in small, noisy groups, going from their sleeping areas in the river to their feeding grounds in the farmers' fields.

But lately, they have been more vocal, restless, flying low over my house, making quite a racket, really! Like a bunch of busy women arguing about something.

And just before noon, it seems they all came up together, flew low once around the Basin and over my house, then came back more decisively heading straight South. A few groups did not agree, you could tell, but most of them were very sure about it, and were not shy to express their determination.

The sun shone on their wings, and slowly, I could see they were gaining altitude, for the further south they were, the smaller they became, but stayed visible from my front yard. No wind to impede their progress, today should be a good day to head to warmer climes.

"A liquefaction barge 110 meters long and a gas pipeline of 58 kilometers long: that is what Tugliq wants to build in the port of Gaspé and in the backcountry in the Gaspésie Peninsula if its project to ship liquefied natural gas (LNG) to the Côte-Nord goes ahead. Even if partner Petrolia has not finished assessing the Bourque field potential near Murdochville, Tugliq said Friday in Gaspé the chosen location for its shipping base.

A 110 meter long barge, 40 meters wide and 20 meters high would be anchored at the Sandy Beach dock or near there. It would have the liquefying capacity of 25 billion cubic feet per year. Smaller ships would do the rest of the trip towards the Côte-Nord.

During the next few days, Petrolia will move its drilling rig from the Haldimand no. 4 well in Gaspé to the Bourque no. 1, a vertical well drilled back in 2012 some 30 kilometers east of Murdochville. The wellbore will be drilled again horizontally for about 2 kilometers, then there will be some production tests. Petrolia is still waiting for the permit from Quebec to start working on the $6.5 million project financed by Tugliq, Petrolia and the Quebec government through Ressources Quebec. Another horizontal well should then be drilled to complete the assessment.

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Photo: L'Oeil Régional
"Anthony Ingraffea now denounces fracking as an extreme and dangerous technology: "The industry is reaching into the deepest, darkest corner of its almost empty world hydrocarbon warehouse, and using an inelegant, inefficient, wasteful, bludgeoning process to keep itself alive, at the expense of exacerbating climate change." He places Jessica Ernst's lawsuit on a special pedestal because it has exposed the industry's Achilles heel: migrating gases from millions of leaky wells.

From the outset, industry denials have followed a similar pattern, Ingraffea says. "One: We didn't do it. Two: Prove it. Three: Silence. Maybe we did it, but we're not going to tell anybody." Ernst's case and her refusal to settle out of court have exposed the deception: "Number one, she caught the industry doing it. Number two, she's got the evidence to prove it, and number three, she won't be silent." For all of this, Ingraffea regards Ernst as a public hero."

Monday, November 23, 2015

"After heavy lobbying by the frackers, the British government introduced a new amendment to its Infrastructure Act in 2015. By changing the trespass law, the amendments erode the eight-hundred-year-old Magna Carta, which proclaimed that no man should be stripped of his rights or possessions. The new act gives industry automatic right of access to "deep-level land" under people's homes without their permission, and grants industry the right to "maximize" hydrocarbon recovery. It also allows companies to "store and leave" products or waste in citizens' backyards. Critics have called the law a perfect example of modern-day fascism.

(...)

To date, not one exploratory shale well has been drilled in Ireland. By the end of 2014, as a result of public opposition, the governements of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and the Yukon had imposed restrictions or bans on fracking. New York State outlawed the mining of gas shale basins, to protect public health. It's noteworthy that Jessica Ernst gave talks in all of these jurisdictions."

Sunday, November 22, 2015

"On the issue of groundwater contamination, the oil and gas industry made some unexpected admissions. "Many worries about water quality are based on past operations involving coal bed methane - shallow deposits in closer proximity to groundwater," said Alex Ferguson, a spokesman for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, in a 2014 Calgary Herald advertisement. These operations did occasionnally pollute water resources, he added. "In some of the more infamous instances, affected landowners could light their well water on fire."

"During her research, (anthropologist Simona) Perry was struck by how the cycle of abuse played out in communities fracked by the oil and gas industry. It hapened like clockwork. The cycle began with rising tensions and fears at public meetings and around kitchen tables as the industry invaded with impossible promises. Once a frack job inevitably contaminatd a well, or a pipeline leaked into a river, or a truck hit and killed some cows, rage and blame followed, as did threats and intimidation from industry and its supporters. During the third part of the cycle, regulators reluctantly got involved. Apologies, denials, and excuses blanketed the community. Reconciliation was usually accompanied by the donation of money. A corporate check invariably went to a hospital, school, library, sports center, or fire department. In many cases, gag orders were signed in return for cash settlements. The community would forget the event until the cycle repeated itself, snaring more rural victims. (...)

The cycle left in its wake a conquered people vulnerable to depression, addiction, and suicide."

Friday, November 20, 2015

"SPOG (Sundre Petroleum Operators Group) 's website described the group as "a catalyst for cohesive community spirit" whose "services are available to any stake-holder within the SPOG area with an interest in industrial development, primarily oil and gas." Once run by volunteers, the group had since been synergized; it now operated as part of a joint industry and government network partly funded by the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers.

Synergy groups had a specific mission in the province: to deny, dismiss, and deflect any opposition to industry activities. They did so by organizing free community barbecues (more beef on a bun) accompanied by endless talks and promises about the benefits of best practices. The synergizers promoted best practices because, unlike regulations, they are totally unenforceable.

Thursday, November 19, 2015

"(...)Alberta mother, Kimberly Mildenstein, was taking a different stand against the frackers. (...) A quiet, athletic daughter of local farmers and the mother of three boys, she coaches and referees children's hockey, soccer, and baseball leagues near Sundre, Alberta. Until the frackers arrived, the former social worker had never protested anything. But after a water truck nearly killed a neighbor who was driving home from work late one night, Mildenstein signed petitions and made phone calls to the police requesting safer roads. She felt it was her community duty.

But the industrial traffic and the speeding increased, and soon Mildenstein's neighbors were sharing stories at school about being run off the road by semi tankers supplying frack sites. Mildenstein could no longer walk or bicycle on the narrow country roads with her children. Fleets of semi trailers roared past her home on Eagle Hill. The trucks put on their Jake brakes as they descended, and the helicopter-like noise thudded through the valley for miles. (...)

By 2011, fracking convoys dominated the local roads. Gravel trucks, water trucks, pumping trucks, and semi trailers churned up dust and rocks. Valley residents could no longer leave the windows of their houses open due to the dust and noise. Mildenstein's own house smelled "like it had been hooked up to a mufler system," she says. "To make things worse, the valley amplified the sound of flares, e-brakes, frack jobs, and incinerators.

The racket, complained Mildenstein in one letter to authorities, was "comparable to the sound of large jet engines at an airport or a helicopter hovering over the house." The ERCB sent an official out to Mildenstein's home to investigate. After confirming that drilling operations were indeed violating noise guidelines, the ERCB employee recommended that Mildenstein install a household fan to camouflage the industrial clamor. Another official with the board admitted that the industry was largely self-regulated, and that's just the way it was.

(...)

Mildenstein persisted. She phoned the police, too, about the dangerous traffic levels, but the RCMP detachments in Olds and Sundre said they didn't have the manpower to do anything about it. A provincial peace officer agreed with Mildenstein that industry traffic posed real hazards to citizens. He told her that he had given out numerous speeding tickets but the Crown prosecutor was just throwing them out of court. Meanwhile, Alberta Transportation said it couldn't do anything because the issue was a municipal one. The municipal road officer explained to Mildenstein that the roads existed "for the transfer of goods and services." He suggested her concerns about community safety were a "conflict of interest" with that mandate.

(...)

After her ordeal, Kimberley Mildenstein moved her family and took a psychology course to upgrade her educational credentials. Two items discussed in the course particularly caught her attention. One was the issue of bystanders who witnessed bullying but did nothing out of fear. Mildenstein realized that most rural Albertans had unwittingly become part of a "bystanders' culture." Everyone knew someone or had a relative or spouse who worked for the powerful oil and gas industry. As a result, they were afraid to speak out or to challenge bad industry behavior. Although her neighbors agreed that the fracking boom had deeply changed their community, threatened groundwater, and fragmented the land, "they couldn't put their names on anything." Mildenstein says.

Wednesday, November 18, 2015

"After the Court of Appeal decision, (Jessica) Ernst added up the costs of seven years of resistance to government negligence. She had lost two major legal battles. The most culpable party, the ERCB, had been excluded from her lawsuit. She expected Alberta Environment to be granted immunity too. Her legal fees and expenses had claimed more than $300,000 of her savings, and the pressure of keeping significant funds in a trust account for the lawyers was unnerving. She hadn't bought any new clothes, except for socks and underwear on sale; friends had thoughtfully donated clothing for court appearances. She rarely ate out and did not go to the movies. To save gas money, she visited friends infrequently. She had lived for nine years without safe well water, and still hauled water by truck for cooking and cleaning. She composted her toilet in the yard and in the winter took a sponge bath once a week. She washed her hair every ten days.

(...)

As Ernst saw it, Encana, the Alberta government, and the Canadian legal system had become her unwitting allies. Every time the ERCB or a government lawyer defamed her in a legal brief, she won another small victory for groundwater. Every time the court system upheld another falsehood, her case advanced the need for greater transparency and accountability. The many delays and interferences only proved that industry and government were guilty and that the frackers had broken the law. "My job is done," Ernst told a reporter. "The skeletons of hydraulic fracturing can't be put back in the closet." The longer her case dragged on, the more ordinary citizens would realize how corrupt the legal and regulatory systems supporting fracking had become. To her astonishment, her case had reached an audience far beyond Rosebud, Alberta. People from Argentina, Poland, Chile, the Netherlands, Sweden, Spain, Ireland, France, Germany, Canada, the United States, the U.K., Denmark, South Africa, and Australia now followed her legal battle.

No matter what happened next, Ernst decided, it would energize her resolve. She made her application to the Supreme Court and patiently waited for a reply. As the chief justice had ordered, on October 31 she tabled 2,136 documents supporting her lawsuit. Her case might cost hundreds of thousands more in legal fees and occupy the rest of her life. The artwork and everything else she owned would have to go. She didn't expect to find justice, as Klippenstein and Wanless still hoped she would. Instead, she realized that her case had become something more profound: the public exposure of the groundwater abuse and regulatory corruption funded by the world's most powerful industry.

She also knew by now that she had a power no government could ever defeat: "Men," she said, "do not understand the courage of ordinary women."

The beginning of the public consultations of the Strategic Environmental Assessment (EES) on fossil fuels was especially the occasion to decry the process established by the Couillard government, judged as biased in favor of oil and gas exploitation. Many participants have also decried the absence of a third of the studies ordered by Quebec and the little time available to prepare for the hearings.

"This EES has a favorable prejudice towards hydrocarbons", summed up professor Lucie Sauvé Monday. She is from the scientific collective on shale gas, and was at the consultation that was held in Montreal. They were in the presence of two deputy ministers of the Quebec government, in charge of making sure of the "objectivity" of the EES process.

"The process of the public consultations seem to us to be more of a public relations exercise, added Mrs Sauvé. The same question seems to be asked again and again, hoping to get a different answer, in order to exhaust the citizens that do not have the financial means to participate in processes that turn around the same questions since 2010. It gives an impression of a planned waste of citizens' energy."

"We really have the impression that the opinions expressed will not be taken into account and that the dice are loaded from the start, insisted Jacques Tétrault from the citizens' group Regroupement vigilance hydrocarbures Québec. The future Quebec energy policies and the law on hydrocarbons that were promised for next Spring seem to be already decided upon."

"On November 19, 2013, after suffering a series of strokes, Bandit's quiet brother, Magic, died. (Jessica) Ernst felt eternally guilty about kenneling him so often while she traveled to give talks. "He died lying beside me, at noon," wrote Ernst to friends, "me holding onto his heart, as he always held onto mine, even when I never knew it." The lawsuit had now outlasted both her dogs.

(...)

Ernst never thought she'd get a dog again. But she changed her mind that August when she heard about a ten-year-old Jack Russell named Gem, needing a home. As soon as Ernst met the black-and-white dog, she knew she had found an "adorable" companion. Within days, Gem had settled in at Ernst's bungalow and was hunting gophers. "Gemilicious" also dribbled basketballs across the prairie, making Ernst laugh. Suddenly the weight of the lawsuit seemed manageable again."

Monday, November 16, 2015

The bright ribbon of light is back. For a while, it was hidden by the leaves of summer. All I had was it's roar and it's smells. But the ribbon of light is back in my life.

All the drops of water going by, coming from mountains, and forests, and fields. Water coming from lakes, and streams, and other rivers, going by without looking back. Heading to another great big river and then to sea. Never to be seen again?

Like layers of an onion, I'm slowly dusting off the books I had put aside while the renovations were going on. One by one, each one will find a place on the shelves to share my day to day life, easy to grab when the need arises. They represent who I am, my past, my interests, my passions. They are an integral part of me, a part of my identity, and I like to go through their pages once in a while, just to keep in touch. Just to keep my feet on the ground and my mind on what matters.

I have met people that do not have any books in their life, nothing to read within a hand's reach. I can't imagine how that must be like. An alien on a strange planet, maybe.

"While preparing an appeal to Chief Justice Wittmann's ruling, Klippenstein's firm marshaled arguments that would resonate with landowners and farmers across the continent: "(Jessica) Ernst, like all rural landowners who live near oil and gas development, has little say in where oil and gas operations are located or how such activities are conducted. She has no ability to inspect operations, or to make sure that the operations are conducted in a safe manner, and only a limited ability to respond to protect herself or her property when something goes terribly wrong. In this case, Ernst was completely reliant on the ERCB to protect her and her property from adverse impacts caused by negligent oil and gas activities. Where citizens have no means to protect themselves from a real danger, they should be entitled to rely on government agencies tasked with inspection and enforcement."

Sunday, November 15, 2015

"(Jessica) Ernst didn't take long to reflect on the matter: she wasn't about to let the courts and Stephen Harper use her case to cripple the Charter. She ordered her lawyers to appeal. "I have no choice." she told the media. "Chief Justice Wittmann ruled that the ERCB has a duty to protect the public, but not me. I am the public; we all are. Without water to bathe in, the public's well-being declines - as mine has for years. Without water to drink, the public dies, so do all individuals - including Justice Wittmann and his loved ones. There is no frack worth that. If I let these rulings stand, companies and the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers will push regulators across Canada to do unto others as the ERCB did unto me, when they breached my Charter rights and tried to intimidate me into silence by judging me a criminal without any evidence or trial."

Excerpt from Andrew Nikiforuk's book Slick Water - Fracking and One Insider's Stand Against the World's Most Powerful Industry, p. 268

Saturday, November 14, 2015

"(...)Brent O'Neil, an international oil-patch driller, sat down in Calgary with lawyer Glenn Solomon to get some legal advice. (...)

"On your experience with fracking and stuff, where, what's the success rate?" (...) What's the Canadian climate for that kind of stuff? Is it worth a fight?"

"I'm not aware of any cases that have gone to trial where fracking damage has been successfully proved." Solomon replied. "But, again, most of these cases resolve. 'Okay, we damaged your water well, We'll just set you up with potable water through a tank system forever, because, you know, we just spent a million dollards drilling this well that we made a hundred million on. And it's costing us an extra three hundred thousand. We're okay.'"

Solomon elaborated on the industry's attitude. "'You know, we don't need to litigate with you, we don't even need to know that it was our fault. We're just happy to pay you. And by the way, by doing that you shut up, the regulators stay off our back, we get to do it again down the street.' And so that's the oil company approach on these (things). The people who typically are suing are getting a lot of resistance, and it's a knock-'em-down, drag-'em-out brawl, where the oil companies are not resolving it. If you drag the regulators, I can tell you from experience...it's World War III. And Encana, Alberta Environment, and the ERCB, as it turns out, all have effectively unlimited resources. You know they have office towers full of experts. They have bank accounts full of cash. The cost of having even an army of lawyers is something that they wouldn't even notice, and they don't have to answer for it. So anyone who wants to pick that fight literally is crazy."

Friday, November 13, 2015

"Back in Alberta, the interests of the industry and government had increasingly become indistinguishable. In April 2013, the Alberta government appointed Gerard Protti, former Encana vice president and a founder of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, to chair the newlyformed Alberta Energy Regulator (AER). At the time of his appointment, Protti was still listed in Ottawa as a registered energy lobbyist. He also sat on the board of directors of the Alberta Research Council (now Alberta Innovators), which had dismissed water contamination cases as natural.

The Alberta government had first hired Protti to provide advice on streamlining legislation to make the extraction of extreme hydrocarbons easier. They like the energy lobbyist's recommendations so much that they put him in charge of implementing the changes. One of Protti's first suggestions was that the province draft a new energy bill. The controversial Responsible Energy Development Act disbanded the scandal-ridden ERCB and created the generic-sounding Alberta Energy Regulator, now 100 percent funded by industry. In addition, the bill transferred environmental and water protection from Alberta Environment to the energy regulator. To discourage public litigation, the new act also gave the AER authority to limit public involvement in industry hearings. And to foster the speedy approval of unconventional projects, the words "public interest" were removed from the agency's mandate. Not surprisingly, the act also sported a rewritten immunity clause that incuded the phrase "any act of thing done or omitted to be done in good faith under this Act." Lawyers dubbed it the "Ernst clause," because (Jessica) Ernst's lawsuit emphasized what the ERCB had promised but failed to do. It was now impossible for any other Albertan to sue the regulator for failing to protect the public interest."

The banning of marching in the streets for protesters that want to block road circulation violates their constitutional rights, just ruled the Quebec Superior Court, thus invalidating an often used tool by police against protesters.

In today's ruling, judge Guy Cournoyer acquitted protester fined back in 2011 as per a contentious article of the Highway Safety Code. It bans "all concerted action" aimed at obstructing road circulation.

But this provision "encroaches on freedom of expressions and peaceful association protected by the Quebec and Canadian Charters", writes the judge. "This limitation is not justified within a free and democratic society."

The government has six months to modify the Highway Safety Code to conform to the ruling.

Four watercourses in the south portion of Quebec are seven times more polluted than 5 years ago.

The pollution in southern Quebec rivers has broken records as per a Quebec Environment Ministry report. More than 96% of specimens taken from four watercourses in the southern part of Quebec (Yamaska, Richelieu, Nicolet and St. Lawrence Rivers) and in their watershed have revealed pollution levels over acceptable standards. It is seven times more than five years ago.

Corn and soy are the cause

This meteoric increase is caused, among other things, the increase use of neonicotinoids by the soy and corn growers. The more the watersheds go through these fields, the more those insecticides are found in the rivers, explains the report. Even though they are barely harmful to humans, neonicotinoids are considered very toxic for aquatic species and pollinators.

The planet reacts

As soon as January 2016, neonicotinoid use will be banned in France. As for Ontario, they want to reduce the areas where they are used by 80% by 2017. There are no neonicotinoid measures planned in Quebec. Quebec's phytosanitary strategy for agriculture aims to reduce pesticide use on Quebec farms by 25% by 2021.

Gusts of wind are ripping the last lilac leaves off their branches, and spats of rain try to make sure those on the ground stay put. The roar of the rapids reaches me in waves through the window panes, and I can also hear the trees groan in protest for being shaken so. Finches, chickadees and nuthatches frantically rush to hide as much sunflower seeds from the feeder as possible, getting ready for the bitter cold that is sure to come, not counting on me to keep it full when they will need it the most.

This morning, I shook the carpets outside just in time, for if I had waited, we would have gotten wet. Satisfied to know that I vacuumed most of the main floor, I settle down for an afternoon of crossword puzzles, waiting for more clement weather to venture outside.

"Since 2009, (Anthony) Ingraffea had also become a major critic of the fracking industry. He had concluded that policy on the technology clearly outpaced the science and that he had a responsibility to challenge industry's lies. In addition, he had intimately studied the technology's fatal flaw: the inability to contain an induced fracture. Early in his career, Ingraffea had been part of a Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory team that tried, in 1983, to develop computer simulation models to show how fracture fluids might travel through naturelly fractured Devonian shale rocks. To get the shale to let go of the methane, indutry had to connect to existing natural joints, cleats, and fractures with a multitude of man-made fractures over a vast area. The team also tried 2D and 3D coputer models to illustrate the complexity of the connections, but to no avail. "The fracture wanted to go wherever it wanted to go," recalls Ingraffea. "You could't predict it." Thirty-two years later, Ingraffea still gets calls from petroleum executives asking him for help in producing an accurate predictive model for fracking. "That tells you everything you need to know," he says. "They are just using brute force."

(...)

"The new kind of high-volume fracking, which hopefully we won't see in New York, exacerbates and makes worse a bad situation. It used to be with the old conventional wells there was a well and you'd have to go maybe a kilometer away to the next well. And maybe you were lucky enough not to see the chemical constituents that went down one well affecting the integrity of the cement on that well. But now we are seeing many wells drilled from one pad and many wells restimulated adjacent to existing wells, and both those processes, pardon the pun, put more pressure on the cement. The strength of the cement, the toughness of the cement, and the durability of the cement are all very important qualities you want, and are all being challenged by the mechanical process of joining one well very close to another well and all the ground motions that occur." Thanks to hydraulic fracturing, added Ingraffea, the industry is speeding up a cement degradation process "that used to take decades." Now, he said, it takes only years."

"The oil manna is already helping the Anticosti Island economy. Between 120 and 140 people will work on the island during the summer of 2016 thanks to the second phase of the oil exploration program. Petrolia and its partners will invest $35 million once the government will have given the environmental authorization certificate. "Next year is going to be the real test. It is about three horizontal wells with fracking to find out if hydrocarbon production is possible, yes or no," says Alexandre Gagnon, CEO of Petrolia. Mr Gagnon was at the Quebec Oil and Gas Association conference. Work should start in May 2016 and will last 6 months. The drilling with fracking were initially planned for summer of 2015, but were put back one year because of delays. Petrolia finished a campaign of 12 stratigraphic surveys last summer: 7 in 2015 and 5 in 2014. The work done on the island back in 2014 and in 2015 gave work to 90 persons, says the company. On Anticosti, the Quebec government has a 35% participation in the partnership that runs the project, and the private partners Maurel and Prom, Corridor Resources and Petrolia have each 21,7% of the shares."

"As news of (Jessica) Ernst's lawsuit spread, invitations to speak flooded her inbox. In May 2012 she flew to Michigan, where she talked to hundreds of landowners about the truth and consequences of fracking. Encana had attacked the Antrim Shale there and problems galore had arisen. An industry representative stormed out of one of her talks, shouting that it was 80 percent embellishment. "That's funny," responded Ernst. "Eighty percent of my talk is based on industry and government data, and only 20 percent is personal." While in Michigan, she also explained how industry undermined communities by promising them money before they fracked them. "No healthy community will allow hydraulic fracturing," said Ernst, "so they (the industry) have to make the community sick. And they do so by feeding the dark side (of) human nature, which is greed, sloth, selfishness. They feed the ego, they promise a little bit... and then whammo, the community is divided. The people with concerns are then abused by the people who want more money, and Encana doesn't even have to do the dirty work."

After Michigan, Ernst traveled to upper New York State, which had declared a moratorium on fracking in 2011. Audiences there coudn't believe that she wouldn't sign a gag order. During her talks, she teamed up with Cornell University fracking expert Anthony Ingraffea, whom she had met a year earlier at a talk in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She and Ingraffea had corresponded since then on the technical nitty-gritty of fracking. The two scientists made an odd pair. Ernst was living a life that had been fractured, and Ingraffea, a world authority on the mechanics of fractures, knew that her story reflected the hard reality of the science."

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

"Having survived a financial crash during which every authority and professional lied to the public, the Irish suspected the frackers were just another breed of foreign pirates. So, too, did Irish-born doctor John O'Connor. The family physician worked in northern Alberta, and he had drawn attention to rising rates of rare cancers downstream from the huge tar sands project. O'Connor had witnessed how an oil boom could undo a place. When friends in Ireland asked him about the fracking experience in Canada, O'Connor told them about Jessica Ernst.
(...)
Her first hour-and-a-half-long talk, "Life Inside a Frac Experiment." took place in the village of Belcoo in County Fermanagh (...) more than 350 people filled the Rainbow Ballroom of Romance in Glenfarne (...) Ernst opened her talk by admitting that it was really hard to resist and to speak out. But on the issue of fracking, she said, people had to let their fears go. "I'm here to tell you tonight that laws and regulations do not protect us from the new brute force of hydraulic fracturing or the new 'super fracking' experiments."
(...)
Enst traced the history of fractures going out of zone into freshwater aquifers and warned the assembled group that fracks were unpredictable things: they didn't stay in the target zone, and they followed the path of least resistance. No amount of industry denial could change that fact. Next report to Congress that had documented how "residual fracturing fluid migrated into a water well" in West Virginia in 1982. As the EPA later admitted, and the New York Times would report, hundreds of other cases had been hidden by confidentiality agreements or gag orders. No one had the right to cover up contamination of lakes and rivers, said Ernst calmly, "because we share our water." There was a groan of recognition.
(...)
By the close of Ernst's tour, the Irish were calling her the "Joan of Arc of Alberta" and a "Rachel Carson of the Environment." Ernst spoke directly to thousands of people, and Ireland's national network interviewed the oil-patch scientist three times on television. Community groups booked her for a return visit the following year. "Forewarned is forearmed," wrote a grateful physician colleague of O'Connor. To this day, O'Connor swears it was the best investment he ever made. As for Ernst, she arrived back in Alberta exhausted and was sick for three weeks."

I'm the second generation of my family that lives in Richelieu, Quebec, in Canada. My family tree, both from my mother's and my father's side, has its roots in Quebec since the beginning of the 1600s: my ancestors crossed the ocean from France, leaving Perche and Normandy behind them. Both French AND English are my mother tongues: I learned to talk in both languages when I was a baby, and both my parents were perfectly bilingual too.